


Crash Through The Surface (Where They Can't Hurt Us)

by Hcpelesshcney



Series: song fics [3]
Category: The Fosters (TV 2013)
Genre: Don't hate me for this, F/F, Falling In Love, Leaving Home, Marriage Proposal, Not Canon Compliant, On the Run, Run-On Sentences, Song fic, Surprise Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 05:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18329333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hcpelesshcney/pseuds/Hcpelesshcney
Summary: "I have to get out of here. I have to. And I want you with me when I leave.”Sometime in her monologue, Ximena had turned back to face her girlfriend, had reached out and brushed her hand up against the curl of hair at the nape of her neck. Callie sighs, melting into the touch. She leans over, just the slightest bit, rests her forehead against Ximena’s. She gives in, again, always. “Okay.”





	Crash Through The Surface (Where They Can't Hurt Us)

**Author's Note:**

> *Story based on the song Sleep On The Floor by the Lumineers.  
> *Title from the song Shallow by Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper.  
> -  
> Y'all, this is my first time writing anything for The Fosters, and I'm actually pretty proud of it! I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. As always, kudos and comments are much appreciated!

_ “Run away with me.” they’re kiss drunk (and wine drunk) when the words float out into the air. Callie stills, mouth going slack against Ximena’s jaw. The night air was chill against the warm thrum of their skin, their breaths coming out in puffs around them. The hood of Ximena’s car had long since cooled, they’d been sitting out in the field so long. _

_ “What do you mean?” it’s timid, hesitant. Callie never was any good at speaking her mind. _

_ Ximena blinks, soft and slow, her lashes fluttering against the freckle-dusted curve of her cheeks. Pulled away like this, with the thinnest space between them, she takes the time to trace her fingertips along Callie’s face—from her earlobe down along her  crooked jaw, stopping at the point of her chin. In the moonlight, Ximena’s hand looked dark against the flower petal pale of Callie’s skin. She never let herself be this careful in the daylight. “Run away with me.” Ximena repeats, firmer this time. Less like she’s dreaming, less like she always is.  _

_ “Ximena,” Callie starts, stops, closes her eyes. “We can’t just run away.”  _

_ “Why not?” She doesn’t say it to be difficult. She says it because she really doesn’t understand. Ximena grew up on the road, the wayward daughter to a pair of immigrant parents from Mexico. A family living out of their beat up caravan, her parents were always chasing chasing chasing the next harvest, the next job, anything to keep the two little mouths of Ximena and her sister fed and growing. This is to say, that even when her heart ached for a home to settle down and grow roots in, it wasn’t hard for her to picture packing everything up and falling back into the wind.  _

_ “We have a life here, ‘Mena. Work, and school, and-” Callie stops herself from saying  _ family _ , because that’s still a subject too raw to acknowledge. But she knows Ximena hears it regardless. She can feel it in the way the other girl shifts just that bit farther away. “We just… can’t.”  _

_ Ximena falls back against the hood of the car, head resting on the windshield. Face tipped up towards the night sky, she sighs. “Callie, please,” her voice is ragged against the empty air, like it hurts her to talk. Like it hurts her to breathe. “This town- I just- I can’t stay here anymore. Everywhere I go, everywhere I look, my family is-” She stops, forces herself to breathe. And  _ oh _ , that’s what this was about. Callie should have known. “I have to get out of here. I  _ have _ to. And I want you with me when I leave.” _

_ Sometime in her monologue, Ximena had turned back to face her girlfriend, had reached out and brushed her hand up against the curl of hair at the nape of her neck. Callie sighs, melting into the touch. She leans over, just the slightest bit, rests her forehead against Ximena’s. She gives in, again, always. “Okay.” _

_ Sneaking into the house that night was easier than usual. With both of Callie’s parents out of town for the weekend on some couples’ retreat, she and her siblings were more or less left to fend for themselves. Which meant that as long as she didn’t say anything about what anyone else was doing, they wouldn’t snitch on her either. She packed quickly, sending Ximena to the bathroom to pack the barest of toiletry necessities. The less time she had to focus on what to pack, the less likely she was to chicken out.  _

_ She shut the door to her room a handful of moments later, meeting Ximena in the hall. She took the ziplock bag being handed to her, shoving it into the duffle bag she’d packed moments before, then headed for the stairs. Down two flights, around a corner, and the pair of them are back at the front door. Callie stalls in her tracks, Ximena waiting for her just outside the doorway.  _

_ “Aren’t you coming?” it’s less of a question and more of a prompt. Callie takes a step back, and for a split moment Ximena thinks that maybe she won’t be, after all. _

_ “Go wait in the car,” Callie says, instead. “I’ll be out in just a minute. I forgot something.” Ximena nods, taking the duffle bag from Callie to put in the trunk. With the door closed again, Callie steps through the unlight hallways of the house she grew up in, making her way to the kitchen. On the island countertop, there’s a pad of paper for grocery lists and a basket of pens, just like always. Selecting a pen, Callie scrawls a quick note to her parents, who would be coming back from their retreat in the morning. They were going to kill her when she got back, if she got back, but at least they would know. She folds the note in half, setting the pen on top of it before turning on her heels and walking back to the front entryway. With one last look around, she took a deep breath, and stepped back out into the night.  _

_ They drive. Ximena takes the first shift, Callie sitting beside her in the passenger’s seat. She messes around with the stereo, plugging her phone into the auxiliary port and flipping through her music until she settles on a playlist Ximena had sent her months before. She settles in, legs pulled up beneath her on the seat, lazily reaching over to hold Ximena’s hand over the center console. They’re already on the road, as crazy as the whole situation was, and there was no use worrying about what would happen once they got back right now. So she wasn’t going to. Right now, Callie was just going to enjoy being beside her girlfriend for as long as she can. They drive.  _

_ Before they had left, Callie told Ximena to wake her up when it was her turn. At the time, XImena had agreed, because she’d planned on stopping at a reststop at some point in the night to sleep for a few hours before continuing on their way. In practice, however, she didn’t end up stopping once that night. Her mind was an anxious whirring mess, running more miles an hour than the car she drove. It was hard to calm herself, even with Callie sleeping steadfast beside her. Maybe it was hard to calm herself  _ because _ of Callie sleeping steadfast beside her.  _

_ When she had proposed the idea of leaving, she wasn’t really expecting Callie to give in at all. She knew it was a long shot, had just thought it was something they would talk about but never actually go along with. But now they were here, two hours into Arizona and still going. Now they were here, and even if the backlash at home was going to be hell, at least they had the moment they were in.  _

_ Around 7 in the morning, Callie finally began to stir, sleepily blinking against the bright morning light pouring in around them. She stretched her body as much as the cramped car would allow, back popping as she shifted to sit up after hours of laying curled in. “Where are we?”  _

_ “Just outside of some town called Eloy. El-oy? Ee-loy? Whatever, pronunciation isn’t important. We’re about six hours away from where we started.” Which is to say, six hours away from home. Or, six hours into freedom. _

_ “Have you slept at all?” Callie drags a heavy hand over her eyes, scrubbing the sleep away. Ximena glances over at her through the corner of her vision, heart still racing over the soft openness Callie’s face held when she just started waking. As if she hadn’t seen that exact same look a million times.  _

_ “I meant to.”  _

_ “You  _ meant _ to? Mena, you didn’t stop at all?”  _

_ She shrugs, a rise and fall of her shoulders. “No, but it’s fine. I’ll stop in the next town for breakfast and take a break there.” _

_ Ximena feels more than sees the grumpy look that Callie casts towards her. “Fine. But I’m driving after that.”  _

_ It’s the least she can do. _

_ They get breakfast in Eloy, Arizona. A small diner that had definitely seen better days. Splitting hash browns and scrambled eggs, Callie snaps candid photos of Ximena laughing in a way she hadn’t in what felt like months. Not since her parents- not since Poppy- well, it didn’t matter. Ximena was laughing again, and even if the situation was outrageous, Callie was thankful for it. After breakfast, Ximena fetched a change of clothes for both of them from the car, along with their toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. They took turns changing in the single bathroom in the diner, and after that were back on the road.  _

_ Callie drove, miles and miles of empty desert as they ate up the ground in Arizona. Ximena was sleeping when they crossed over through New Mexico late in the afternoon, though she wasn’t missing much. Everything was desert—long stretches of nothing but sand. It felt like they were the only car on the interstate for miles. Maybe they were.  _

_ They stop again just inside of El Paso, Texas, for dinner. Callie pulled the car over in the parking lot of a truckstop diner, dropping her head back against the headrest of her seat with a groan. Everything ached from being confined to the car for so long, yet at the same time she couldn’t bring herself to climb out. Ximena was standing just outside the car, her door open as she stretched out the ache of sitting for so long. Climbing out after her, Callie locked the car and dropped the keys into her jacket pocket. They don’t hold hands walking into the restaurant, already falling into the practiced defense mechanism they’d been forced to learn. This was a new place, in a red state that wasn’t quiet about their distaste for the LGBT+ community, and neither of them felt like being ridiculed at the moment for something they couldn’t, wouldn’t, change.  _

_ Dinner was quiet, a grilled cheese and bowl of soup they split between the two of them. They linger in the diner for longer than they really need to, both silently dreading having to climb back into the car after being confined to it for the whole day. Callie asks if they should just stop for the night, find a motel for cheap and continue on in the morning. Ximena is all too ready to agree, so they do. Just down the street is a Motel 6, and both girls are too exhausted to even bother changing for the night. Rather, they curl up together in one of the two beds in the room, and fall asleep within minutes.  _

_ Early the next morning, Callie wakes up first. Her phone is a storm of notifications, and her heart pounds in her chest while she struggles to untangle herself from Ximena in order to grab her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. As quietly as she can, she steps out of the room, leaning against the railing outside for support as she scrolls through the messages. They ranged from worried to furious, and though Callie knew she should call up her parents and let them know she was safe, she didn’t have the energy to do it. Ximena was still sleeping just on the other side of the door to their motel room, and the sky above was so warm and blue, Callie couldn’t bring herself to dampen how she felt, even if amongst the excitement she harboured her own fear. So she pocketed her cell again and slipped back into the room, snuggling back up to her girlfriend to catch a few more moments of sleep before they had to climb back into the car.  _

_ Leaving El Paso behind, Ximena takes over driving. She stopped for gas right before they’d left the town, filling the tank completely so they wouldn’t have to worry about it for a while. Callie had grabbed some snacks for the road at the gas station, noting that Ximena paid solely in paper bills, rather than her debit card like she normally would. In the car again, when they were back on the road and miles away from town, she asked her about it.  _

_ Ximena glanced over from the driver’s seat, a quick acknowledgement before her eyes were back on the stretch of highway before them. “I closed my account a few days ago.” she answered, and Callie really should not have been as shocked as she was. From the sound of her voice when she’d asked her to run away two nights before, Ximena had been planning to leave San Diego for a while. At least a few weeks, if not since… Well, since the beginning of the end, Callie figured. Since Ximena’s life turned upside down. Looking over at her now, Callie could see how worn down she was. How had she not noticed sooner? _

_ All she can say is, “Oh.” and the conversation ends there. Ximena turns the music up, some country song about owning the city for the night. Callie rolls down her window, letting the morning air wash through the car. Reaching over, she carefully takes Ximena’s right hand from the steering wheel, lacing their fingers together. “I love you.” She says, soft against the rest of the noise around them. Ximena doesn’t say it back, but she squeezes their hands together, and it feels like an  _ I love you _ , anyway.  _

_ Callie ends up calling her family when they stop for lunch later in the day. She doesn’t talk for long, a handful of short sentences thrown in between her mothers talking over each other. She doesn’t tell them what town they’re in, just that she and Ximena are safe. Or, as safe as they can be, after leaving their whole lives behind. She hangs up before either of her moms can ask too many more questions. _

_ And they drive. Through Oklahoma and Arkansas, further and further from California. They stop in backroad towns and tourist traps, taking pictures with statues, the sunset, whatever caught their attention. At night, if neither of them felt up to driving, they would stop and rent a room in whatever motel would house them for a while. Callie got used to sleeping pressed against Ximena’s chest, her ear resting about her girlfriend’s heart, just to remind herself that they were both still here, still living breathing surviving. They had decided on a destination over breakfast, noting that Callie had a family friend living in North Carolina, right on the beach. She’d messaged the friend, a woman in her 50s Callie knew as Aunt Joan, soon after, letting her know that she and Ximena were going to be “in the area” for a few day. Aunt Joan was more than willing to let them stay over, commenting on how long it had been since she’d seen Callie at all. And they drive.  _

_ They reach North Carolina early Monday morning. Briefly, Callie thinks about the fact that she’s going to miss her Statistics class, not that it even really matters anymore. Ximena is sleeping beside her, head pillowed by a scrunched up jacket on the center console. Callie wishes she could take a picture of that—of how soft and open Ximena’s face looked when she wasn’t closing herself off. The sunlight casts shadows over her face, the wind from Callie’s open window lifting strands of her hair and blowing them around. Callie’s heart aches, just a bit, realizing how hard the loss of everything must have been. She had been there when Ximena got the call, but even then, even within all that time, Ximena had never let her see just how drastically it affected her. Part of her wishes she had.  _

_ They stop first at Aunt Joan’s house. The woman had to go to work and wouldn’t be back until late in the evening, but she’d left a key beneath the doormat for the girls to use to get in. Callie brought their bags to the guest room she hadn’t been in since she was seventeen years old, but it didn’t look any different now than it did then. In fact, the house looked more or less the same as it did all those years ago. This was a comfort Callie did not know she needed, but she appreciated it regardless. After unpacking their car, both girls took a shower, washing away the grime of all  _

_ The first couple of days in North Carolina were spent in lazy procession. After being cooped up in the car for so long, Callie was glad to be able to stretch out on a bed that she didn’t have to pay for. Ximena took to walking along the beach in the early mornings, letting the sea breeze wash over her in a way that it hadn’t for months. It was a baptism of sorts, the salt in the air cleansing away all the ache she’d meant to leave behind in California. She wasn’t sure if it was working, really, but it gave her a reason to get up out of bed when all she wants is to disappear into the sheets. That, if nothing else, was helping.  _

_ Days turned into weeks turned into both girls finding jobs in Kinnakeet, North Carolina so that they could pay rent to stay with Aunt Joan. They fell into a rhythm that felt more natural than things had back home. Or, back in San Diego, since both girls had stopped calling that home weeks ago. Callie called her parents more frequently now, letting them know how things were going. While neither mom was entirely happy about the situation, they both knew their daughter was too old to corral anymore. Not that she was ever young enough, or listened enough, to begin with.  _

_ On a Sunday morning, Ximena woke up early, dragging Callie out of bed with her. They dressed, made a thermos of coffee, and headed down towards the shore.  _

_ “Why are we up so early?” Callie was never a morning person, no matter how much she tried. Ximena laughed, a brilliantly warm sound that was becoming more common the longer they stayed.  _

_ “Why not?” is her only answer before she took off down the beach, Callie stumbling along in the sand after her. Eventually, they stop, heaving in breaths of the salty sea air. For a moment, they’re quiet, sitting in the sand and watching the sun rise over the horizon. Then, Ximena is tugging on Callie’s hand, getting her to look over.  _

_ “I love you,” she says, breathless, honest. A strand of hair blows across her face, catching on her mouth. Callie smiles, soft as always, reaching over to tuck it back behind Ximena’s ear.  _

_ “I know.” Callie answers, because she does. Even though it’s a rare declaration, she knows. And she loves her girlfriend just as wholly, rawly, fiercely. She does. “I love you too.”  _

_ “I… I know. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot, lately, actually.”  _

_ “You have?”  _

_ “Yeah. And I mean, we’ve been together for a while now, almost three years, and I know how we got here isn’t the most conventional, or even the most convenient, but, god, Callie I wouldn’t change a thing. I love you, and I love that you were willing to leave San Diego behind with me. I love the way you laugh, and I love how you crinkle your nose when you smile. I love that you never press me to talk about things I’m not ready to talk about, but you’re also so willing to listen when I am. I know I don’t have a lot to offer right now, or ever, really but I just… Love you. So much, Callie, and even if I had to wait a million years to be right here with you again, I’d do it. I’d wait forever for you.” Ximena stops, blinking back a set of tears that had started to form. Callie reaches over, swiping them away. “Marry me.”  _

_ She stills, her hand still resting against Ximena’s cheek. It feels like they’re right back at that night, all those months ago, when Ximena asked her to run away. But she’s not scared this time. She’s not hesitant. “Okay,” she says, voice quiet, “Yes. Okay.”  _

_ Ximena smiles, brilliant and huge and warm. Callie leans over to kiss her, an off-kilter affair that’s more a clacking of teeth than anything else, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re happy and in love and— _

Callie wakes with a start, her heart a wild bird beating beating beating to get out of her ribcage. The tears hit faster than the ache does, the warmth from her dream completely washed away. It felt like she couldn’t breathe, like no matter how hard she tried her body wasn’t going to take it. She hated that this happened so often now, that her mind would betray her so deeply. 

Ximena was gone, had been gone for six months, along with her younger sister, Poppy. It had been six months since a drunk driver tore through the stop sign at the intersection they had been passing through, t-boning the car with enough force to flip the Ximena's car six times. The drunk driver was sent to the hospital with a fractured arm and a bruised up face. Ximena was pronounced dead on arrival, Poppy passing away in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. 

With their parents back in Mexico, Ximena's emergency contact had been changed to Callie. The call had come in at a little past midnight, ripping her away from the family movie night she had previously been enjoying. Now, six months later, she was still being haunted by the alternate life she could have lead if she had run away when Ximena asked her to the week before the accident. Now, six months later, she wishes she had.


End file.
